Everything rests in him; he rests in none of it.
It sounds like a riddle at first: how can something hold everything and yet be held by nothing in return? The verse answers by locating the pervading nature beyond what the senses can ever reach.
This whole universe is pervaded by me, but not in the form you can see. Every being rests in me, yet I do not rest in any of them.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna that what he is about to hear is the king of secrets and the king of knowledge, supremely pure, easy to practice, and never lost once gained. Now, in the very next line, he delivers it: a claim about how he pervades the whole world, and how that pervasion does not work the way ordinary containment does.
The teaching
This whole universe is filled by him, but not by the body Arjuna can see. It is filled by a nature that lies beyond every sense, reachable only by looking inward rather than outward. This answers a question before it is even asked: how could one person, standing on one battlefield, possibly be everywhere? He is not, as that person. He is, as something the eyes were never built to find. Because of this, every being is said to rest in him. Nothing, from the greatest to the smallest, stands on its own footing. Whatever exists, exists by leaning on a support deeper than itself, and that support is named here as Krishna himself. This is not a claim about the distant past, about some original act of creation now finished and gone. It is a claim about right now: existence, at this very moment, is borrowed. And yet, in the same breath, he denies that he rests in them. This is not a retraction. It is the other half of the same claim. The dependence announced in the first half runs one way only, from beings toward their ground, never back again. He needs nothing from what he holds, draws no benefit, no support, no completion from it. The commentators reach for the same image here: open space, which holds every form within itself and is touched, and contained, by none of them. To hold this loosely is to miss it. To be held inside something takes a kind of attachment, a real entanglement between container and contained. The ground that holds everything and needs nothing has no such attachment to offer. So the two claims of this verse, all things rest in me and I rest in none of them, are not in tension. They are the full shape of one asymmetry, stated as plainly as language allows.
The doubt that rises
If nothing has footing apart from him, how is his own freedom from every entanglement anything other than a contradiction of that very dependence? And what would it actually mean to live as though you, too, could hold what is entrusted to you this way?
Where the paths divide
Read through superimposition, the world imagined on an untouched substrate.
The world is not, in the end, other than him; it is imagined upon him the way a snake is mistakenly seen where only a rope lies in the dark. He is the one truly real and shining thing, and the world borrows its appearance of existing from that reality alone. Beings resting in him means they have no being of their own apart from this substrate. And he is not in them because no real relation is possible between something merely imagined and the ground it is imagined upon; the substrate is never actually touched by what is falsely projected onto it. The surviving record of this reading is thinner here than elsewhere, breaking off just after the central point about non-contact, so this account stays close to what is actually stated rather than extending it further.
Read as the inner ruler of a fully real, governed world.
The world here, conscious and unconscious together, is wholly real, pervaded by him as its inner ruler, its antaryamin. To be pervaded is to be owned, upheld, and governed from within, the way a body stands in relation to the self that rules it: real, dependent, never dissolved into its ruler. That he does not stand in them means his own standing needs nothing from them; the ownership and the governing are announced together, and the dependence runs entirely from the governed toward the one who governs.
Read narrowly, as an answer to why the pervading Lord goes unseen.
What survives of this reading stays close to one focused question: if he pervades everything, why is he not simply visible everywhere? The answer given is that the form doing the pervading is itself beyond the senses, unmanifest, so universal presence and ordinary invisibility turn out not to be in tension at all. A fuller working-out of this into the wider doctrine of the soul's essential dependence on him would go beyond what this particular fragment actually states, and is offered here only as a clearly marked extension, not as this reading's own settled claim.
Read as awareness veiled by the very shape it holds up.
All beings rest in him is read as the plain report of what any search for a true ground will always find: awareness itself, beneath every possible object. That he does not abide in them is explained psychologically rather than spatially. Beings come forward presenting their familiar, nameable, object-like shape, and that very shape veils the awareness actually holding it up. He is absent from beings only in the sense that looking for him amid the object-form is looking in exactly the place that form conceals.
Read as majesty disclosed for the devotee: present everywhere, untouched like space.
He is the ground from which all things, moving and unmoving, have come, and scripture is cited in support: having created it, he entered into it. So all beings rest in him as effects rest in their cause. Yet he does not rest inside them the way clay sits inside the pots made from it; he is like open space, unattached by nature, touching nothing it holds. Containment would require an attachment the unattached ground simply does not have to give, so presence everywhere and being untouched by everything are one description, not two.
Read as a technical clarification that dissolves the apparent paradox.
The seeming contradiction, that a single, limited person could pervade the entire universe, is answered by separating two things that ordinary perception runs together: the visible body, and the self-luminous, non-dual nature that actually does the pervading. Presence is asserted of that deeper nature; limitation and invisibility belong only to the body. Once kept apart, the two claims of the verse never actually collide.
All six readings agree on the shape: beings rest in him, and he rests in none of them. They part on what kind of world this describes. Is it an appearance imagined upon an untouched substrate, so that the many vanish once ignorance ends? Or is it his own real body, governed from within, never dissolved? Is the ground reached by searching an object away, awareness itself, veiled by the very shapes it supports? The verse states the asymmetry with total confidence. It does not settle what kind of world stands on the other side of it.
A question to carry
If you tried, today, to hold the people and situations entrusted to you the way this verse says the Lord holds the world, fully, and without needing anything back, what in you would have to loosen first?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So rest in the thought that you, too, are held without being owned, and try, in turn, to hold what is entrusted to you the same way: fully, and free of the need for anything back in return.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Krishna has just called this teaching the king of secrets and the king of knowledge; here, in the very next breath, he gives the first line of that promised knowledge itself.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
Not his visible body but a nature beyond the senses is what fills the whole world.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Every reading takes unmanifest form as the key that unlocks the whole verse. Krishna does not claim that his visible body fills the universe; he claims that a nature beyond the senses does. This answers the unspoken objection that a single person standing on a battlefield could not possibly be everywhere: it is not that person's body doing the pervading.
Nothing has footing of its own; every being exists only by leaning on this deeper support.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Madhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Because the Lord is this deeper ground, all beings are said to stand in him. The commentators agree that nothing has a footing of its own; whatever exists, from the greatest to the smallest, exists by leaning on a support other than itself, and that support is named here as Krishna.
The dependence runs one way only, from the held toward what holds it, never back again.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Just as firmly, the verse denies that the Lord stands in beings. This is read not as a change of subject but as the necessary other half of the same claim: the dependence announced in the first half runs in one direction only, from beings toward their ground, never from the ground back toward what it grounds.
Presence everywhere and freedom from entanglement are shown to require each other, not contradict each other.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Several commentators use the same class of image to explain how something can hold everything and be held by none of it: space holding forms, or an unattached ground touching nothing it supports. The denial is a denial of containment and dependence, not a denial of nearness or presence.
This is offered as the actual content of the knowledge just praised, not an abstract detour from it.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚrīdhara · Madhusūdana · RāmānujaIn Śrīdhara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
The verse is read as the first delivery of the knowledge Krishna has just spent a verse praising as the king of secrets. What sounds like abstract metaphysics is offered as the very substance of that promised teaching, not a digression from it.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja takes the world, all of it, conscious and unconscious, as fully real, pervaded by Krishna as its inner ruler, antaryamin. Beings stand in him the way a body stands in relation to the self that governs it: dependent, owned, and real, never dissolved. That he does not stand in them means only that his own standing needs nothing from them; the dependence is entirely theirs.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The available fragment from Madhva stays close to one question: why the all-pervading Lord is not seen everywhere. His answer is that the form doing the pervading is itself unmanifest, beyond the senses, so universal presence and ordinary invisibility are not in tension. On a fuller Dvaita reading, one would extend this toward the doctrine that even the beings who rest in him do so as essentially and eternally dependent, but that extension goes beyond what this particular fragment states.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta reads all beings rest in me as the report of what any search for a ground always finds: awareness itself, beneath every object. I do not abide in them is explained psychologically, not spatially. Beings present their familiar, nameable, object-like shape, and that very shape veils the awareness holding it up. The Lord is absent from beings only in the sense that looking for him amid the object-form is looking in the one place that form itself conceals.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as the delivery of the promised knowledge, backed by the Upanishadic line, having created it, he entered into it. Beings rest in him as the ground from which they come, yet he does not rest in them the way clay sits inside a pot; he is like open space, unattached by nature and touching nothing it holds. Containment requires attachment, and the unattached ground simply has none to give.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's answer to the standing objection, how can a limited person pervade everything, is that it is not the visible person who pervades. The pervading nature is self-luminous, non-dual consciousness, being, and bliss, and this is offered as a technical clarification: presence is asserted of that nature, invisibility of the body, and the two claims never actually collide.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Sit for a moment with the people and circumstances that are, in some sense, entrusted to you today. Try holding them the way this verse says the Lord holds the world: fully, without withdrawing your care, and yet without lodging your sense of self inside any of them, and without treating your own standing as dependent on how they turn out. Notice what in you relaxes when support is no longer something you need to receive back from what you are holding.
So hold what has been entrusted to you the way this verse says the Lord holds the world: fully, and without needing anything back in return.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
very reading takes unmanifest form as the key that unlocks the whole verse. Krishna does not claim that his visible body fills the universe; he claims that a nature beyond the senses does. This answers the unspoken objection that a single person standing on a battlefield could not possibly be everywhere: it is not that person's body doing the pervading.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Because the Lord is this deeper ground, all beings are said to stand in him. The commentators agree that nothing has a footing of its own; whatever exists, from the greatest to the smallest, exists by leaning on a support other than itself, and that support is named here as Krishna.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Just as firmly, the verse denies that the Lord stands in beings. This is read not as a change of subject but as the necessary other half of the same claim: the dependence announced in the first half runs in one direction only, from beings toward their ground, never from the ground back toward what it grounds.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several commentators use the same class of image to explain how something can hold everything and be held by none of it: space holding forms, or an unattached ground touching nothing it supports. The denial is a denial of containment and dependence, not a denial of nearness or presence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
The verse is read as the first delivery of the knowledge Krishna has just spent a verse praising as the king of secrets. What sounds like abstract metaphysics is offered as the very substance of that promised teaching, not a digression from it.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara and Madhusudana read the verse through superimposition. The world is not, in the end, other than the Lord; it is imagined upon him by ignorance, the way a snake is mistakenly seen where only a rope lies. Beings rest in him means they have no being of their own apart from that substrate; he is not in them because no real relation can hold between something imagined and the ground it is imagined upon. The published fragment for Shankara here is thinner than usual, breaking off just after the core point about non-contact.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja takes the world, all of it, conscious and unconscious, as fully real, pervaded by Krishna as its inner ruler, antaryamin. Beings stand in him the way a body stands in relation to the self that governs it: dependent, owned, and real, never dissolved. That he does not stand in them means only that his own standing needs nothing from them; the dependence is entirely theirs.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The available fragment from Madhva stays close to one question: why the all-pervading Lord is not seen everywhere. His answer is that the form doing the pervading is itself unmanifest, beyond the senses, so universal presence and ordinary invisibility are not in tension. On a fuller Dvaita reading, one would extend this toward the doctrine that even the beings who rest in him do so as essentially and eternally dependent, but that extension goes beyond what this particular fragment states.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reads all beings rest in me as the report of what any search for a ground always finds: awareness itself, beneath every object. I do not abide in them is explained psychologically, not spatially. Beings present their familiar, nameable, object-like shape, and that very shape veils the awareness holding it up. The Lord is absent from beings only in the sense that looking for him amid the object-form is looking in the one place that form itself conceals.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as the delivery of the promised knowledge, backed by the Upanishadic line, having created it, he entered into it. Beings rest in him as the ground from which they come, yet he does not rest in them the way clay sits inside a pot; he is like open space, unattached by nature and touching nothing it holds. Containment requires attachment, and the unattached ground simply has none to give.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's answer to the standing objection, how can a limited person pervade everything, is that it is not the visible person who pervades. The pervading nature is self-luminous, non-dual consciousness, being, and bliss, and this is offered as a technical clarification: presence is asserted of that nature, invisibility of the body, and the two claims never actually collide.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If everything genuinely rests in God, why does he say he is not in things, and how can that be anything other than a contradiction?
The two halves of the verse describe one relationship, not two competing claims. All beings stand in me names total dependence: nothing has footing of its own, so whatever exists leans on a support deeper than itself, and that support is named here as the Lord.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya
I do not stand in them denies only the reverse direction. The Lord needs nothing from beings and draws no benefit from them; he is not lodged inside them the way an object sits inside a container. The favorite image is space, which holds every form and is touched by none of them.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
So the two statements are not rivals, they are the full shape of one asymmetry: dependence runs from the held toward what holds it, never back again. Read that way, presence everywhere and freedom from every entanglement turn out to require each other rather than contradict each other.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śaṅkarācārya
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with the people and circumstances that are, in some sense, entrusted to you today. Try holding them the way this verse says the Lord holds the world: fully, without withdrawing your care, and yet without lodging your sense of self inside any of them, and without treating your own standing as dependent on how they turn out. Notice what in you relaxes when support is no longer something you need to receive back from what you are holding.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.